Warren Mayor Fouts defends pay raise to assistant he held hands with on trip

7:33 PM, January 24, 2014

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts is striking back today, a day after a YouTube video surfaced showing him holding hands with his young executive assistant during a 2012 trip to Chicago and indicating that he gave her a raise last month.

Fouts said a $5,000 pay raise given to his office’s executive assistant on Dec. 6 — a year after any trip he took — was because she and another mayoral appointee had to take on additional responsibilities since the city’s economic development director went on sick leave Sept. 9.

The November 2012 video indicates that Fouts checked into the executive suite at the Drake Hotel with Amanda Mika, his executive assistant, with whom he dined and strolled down Michigan Avenue holding hands.

The six-minute video indicates that Mika received an 11% pay raise last month, when no one else did, and during the same month that the mayor cut health care options for employees.

It encourages viewers to call City Council and demand action. The video ends with “More to Come ...”

“To accuse me of giving a raise to any city employee because of a trip we took smacks of dirty politics and personal mudslinging at its lowest,” Fouts said in the statement. “The trips in the video had nothing whatsoever to do with pay raises given to the executive assistant. To accuse me of this is a total misrepresentation of the facts in this matter.”

Paperwork attached to his statement indicates Mika’s annual salary was to be increased by $5,000 “due to assumption of council agenda.” It lists her salary as $50,000.

Approved city budgets from this year and last year list the annual salary for the administrative assistant in the mayor’s office as $45,000.

Fouts said that when an employee was given additional responsibilities in the past, he approved pay raises.

He said his memo should explain the reason for the raises and he sees “no need to further explain my actions to the media.”

Fouts said he will not be interviewed on this issue because it will distract him from his full-time responsibilities as mayor.

“Again, there was no connection whatsoever between any pay raise given to any employee and personal trips I took, and any media reports to the contrary could have legal consequences,” according to his statement.

Messages were left for Fouts and Mika. The video notes that Fouts is 71 and Mika is 25.

Also in his statement, Fouts said that any trips he took as mayor were paid by him personally and that he has not spent “one cent of taxpayer monies for any trip.”